As we reached one week into our ride, my morning was greeted with “Bet you didn’t know that a slug has four noses.” “No Mike I was not aware of such a piece of information and to be honest, I don’t care to know how you came about that bit of information!” was my response.

We had a great deal of assistance last night on the site with the use of an additional computer while we were staying at our hotel in Taos. We could not use my laptop to upload but the hotel had one in their library and we also got to use one of the computers in the hotel's office. Thanks to Kelly getting us the use of the additional system!

We started off a bit later this morning as we headed out of Taos but had bright and sunny start, and a bit cool as well. I did not get too far before I couldn’t take it and as we gassed up I added a layer of clothing and also put on my Intersport full leather gloves instead of the summer perforated set. What a difference it made to my thin skin. Mike on the other hand is used to the cold and he was in a t-shirt and his jacket.

We traveled up the mountain and made it to Wheeler Peak, which is the highest point in New Mexico, 13,161 feet! The bikes just don’t run well at that elevation folks!

As we descended the mountain, we headed east and went through over some incredible roads that were as twisty as anyone would ever want! We came to Angels Fire that is 8420 feet above sea level.

After some great roads, we came into Eagle Nest New Mexico and saw more incredible sights. There is a lake located in this small town that is very popular with anglers. I pictured Dave Bush and Larry Barrington from MMI here enjoying a day of fishing. Also along this road are steams that are filled with good catches according to the locals that we spoke to.

The sights along Rt. 64 heading towards Cimarron were awesome. We came across a cliff face that rose over 1000 feet above us!

As we traveled along, we came across many different species of wildlife and I was fortunate to get a shot of this Deer or Antelope. I’m not sure which it was but I do know that once Mike came back it took a look at him and ran off into the wilderness!

We also passed by a couple of homes that were for sale. In Torrance these places would be called “fixer uppers” and would go for somewhere in the 275,000 range. Here they were selling for 95,000 each but of course they had 100 acres of land to go along with them!!

We ate in Clayton and I noticed some clouds coming towards the town. Later that night I saw on the Weather Channel that they got over 6 inches of rain there that afternoon. Now that we are on the east side of the Rocky Mountains, We need to watch the Weather Channel more often (more on that soon!). While we were eating, we decided to modify our plans somewhat and ride to Kansas today instead of stopping in Boise City OK as we originally planned. We were not sure where we would stop in Kansas but would sort that out as we traveled along.

We Crossed over to Oklahoma and I got a nice shot of the bikes in front of the state welcome sign and Mike had to get in and ham it up! I about fell over in laughter but got a great shot of him. I wanted to get one of me doing the same but I couldn’t reach the edge of the sign.

Our ride on Rt. 56 through Oklahoma was on a road that is as straight as any road you can imagine. Just a few miles earlier, we had over 40 turns in one mile while in Oklahoma; we had 2 turns (and they were WIDE sweepers) in 40 miles!

The roads were so long and straight that Mike got in a few minutes of shut-eye while we headed towards the Kansas line.

Then I saw it. Weather. It was big and it was bad. But it was off in the distance. I suggested that we stop and put on our rain suits but Mike insisted that we would miss it. “Don’t worry, we’ll pass it before it gets to us” he said. Yeah Right, I thought. As we closed in on the storm front, I stopped for another shot of it just incase we didn’t make it through the hour!

Well, we got hit. Hard. By everything including golf ball sized hail that felt like bowling balls being hurled at us and sheets of rain like nothing I have ever seen. Lucky for Mike, my bike-to-bike communicator microphone shorted from the water. The words I had for him were not pretty! After we passed through about 15 miles of this brutal weather, I heard Mike though my headset “I don’t think the heavy stuff is gonna come down for quite awhile!” Great time for a quote from Caddy shack pal.. We drove right by the Welcome to Kansas sign as we rode through Elkhart Kansas. After the storm settled to a steady rain, he said that we would have missed it if I wouldn’t have stopped to take the picture! This thing was at least a 10-mile wide storm!

Then he said, “We’ll dry off”! I was soaked through but he was right we did dry off after about another 50 miles. Then it came again! Not as bad this time though.

We stopped for gas in Rolla Kansas and as we were filling up, a fellow drives into the parking lot and gets out of his van and says: “Wow, two Honda CB77 SuperHawks, you guy’s must be either real enthusiasts or completely nuts!” I am not sure which of the two we were at the time but we told him we were more enthusiasts than nuts! Bob Chantland is from Montrose Minnesota and deals in motorcycles. He currently has over 400 of them and buys and sells mostly Hondas. He was just in Albuquerque New Mexico and was traveling back home. Who could have ever imagine we would run across someone like this gentleman while all three of us were so far from our homes?

We chatted with Bob for a while and talked about Honda history but soon the rain started to come down. We took off and once again I thought that we should change into our rain gear but Mike insisted that we would be fine.  

As we approached the next storm front, I decided that at least I was going to remain dry and stopped to change into my rain gear. Mike at least put on his rain pants but we were able to stay in front of the next approaching storm. As we moved along, we came across another town with grain silos but this one had something rather unique. A wind farm was located just on the east side of the town. We stopped at the wind farm and found the the windmills were 295 feet high and have blades that are 70 feet long! The anchor bolts that hold the windmills in place are 12 feet long! There were 171 of the wind mills and they produce enough electricity for 133,000 homes. Pretty amazing. I took a shot of the windmills looking to the west and then Mike thought I should take a look at the east and I saw another storm a brewing. Off we went to stay in front of the storm. We beat it all the way into Dodge City where we rode by the local Honda Dealer and noticed that there were a few folks hanging out by the serve entrance. We stopped by to say hello and met with Darren Rhoten and his crew from Dodge City Motorsports, a multi-line dealer.

We hung out there for an hour or so and they invited us to a barbeque. We thought about going but decided that the bikes needed to be cleaned and check over after the storms we just came through.

We checked into a hotel and as we were coming out to clean the bikes we saw a couple on a GL1800. The gentleman said as we came towards our bikes: “I know you guys!” Darrell and Kim Base stopped by when they saw the bikes in the parking lot. Darrell read about our trip in the Red Rider Magazine and figured that it had to be us! We gave him a card for the website and later received an email inviting us to breakfast. Just a typical example of the reason the slogan “You meet the nicest people on a Honda” still holds true!

Today, we rode the longest day of the trip and rode 375 miles which takes our total trip accumulation to 1790 miles with nothing happening to stop us from continuing the trip!

We’ll update again on Sunday June 6^th!